Scrolling around...October 9, 2012

The Anchoress: Stop Being Excellent!
I’ve said it for years: With socialism, excellence is always set aside for shared mediocrity. The idea appears to be that since it’s hard to achieve excellence for everyone, it simply should not be attempted; everyone should be satisfied with something lesser.

We see the truth of it played out here. Rather than try to replicate the good stuff this Lunch lady is achieving throughout the school system, they just tell her to cut it out. Stop being excellent!...

Albert Mohler: Two Rival Religions? Christianity and Post-Christianity
...Looking back over the last century, Kainz argues that Marxism and ideological Liberalism have functioned as religious systems for millions of individuals. Looking specifically at Marxism, Kainz argues that the Marxist religion had dogmas, canonical scriptures, priests, theologians, ritualistic observances, parochial congregations, heresies, hagiography, and even an eschatology. Marxism’s dogmas were its core teachings, including economic determinism and the “dictatorship of the proletariat.” Its canonical scriptures included the writings of Marx, Lenin, and Mao Tse Tung. Its priests were those guardians of Marxist purity who functioned as the ideological theorists of the movement. Its ritualistic observances included actions ranging from workers’ strikes to mass rallies. The eschatology of Marxism was to be realized in the appearance of “Communist man” and the new age of Marxist utopia.

Similarly, Kainz argues that modern secular liberalism includes its own dogmas. Among these are the beliefs “that mankind must overcome religious superstition by means of reason; that empirical science can and will eventually answer all the questions about the world and human values that were formerly referred to traditional religion or theology; and that the human race, by constantly invalidating and disregarding hampering traditions, can and will achieve perfectibility.”

Kainz also argues that contemporary liberalism has borrowed selectively from the New Testament, turning Jesus’ admonition to “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s,” as a foundation for “absolute secularism,” enshrined in the language of a wall separating church and state. Thus, “religion [is] reduced to something purely private.”...

Science Over Politics: Nobel For Adult Stem Cell Work
British and Japanese researchers have been awarded this year's Nobel Prize for showing how to create embryonic stem cells without using human embryos in a genuinely promising line of research.

For decades now, embryonic stem cell research (ESCR) has been trumpeted as the most promising avenue of research, and those who had moral qualms about using human embryos were dismissed as Bible-thumping troglodytes who stood in the way of making the lame walk...
This year's Nobel Prize for Medicine was shared by a Briton and a Japanese who respects the dignity of the human embryo.

UK: Patients starve and die of thirst on hospital wards
Forty-three hospital patients starved to death last year and 111 died of thirst while being treated on wards, new figures disclose today...

Do you want your goat scruffy or shiny?-Socialized medicine might seem free, but it comes with hidden costs
According to a West African proverb, "a goat owned in common always starves." This pithy phrase captures a key truth of human behavior: People are a lot better about taking care of things that belong to them than they are about taking care of things that don't...

Russian Christians Demand Apple Change 'Offensive' Logo to Cross
Christians from Russia's Orthodox community are demanding that the country's Apple division remove the famous half-bitten apple logo from its products and replace it with a cross, because they find the apple image offensive to their beliefs...

Your Professor Made You Do What?!?
...In another case, a Missouri professor required his social work class to send an advocacy letter to the state legislature supporting a controversial social issue. A student disagreed with the letter and refused to sign it. The professor charged her with a university ethics violation. Like the situation in Los Angeles, that is unlawful retaliation...

UK: Children branded as ‘Nazis’ for opposing same-sex marriage
School children as young as 12 who disagree with same-sex marriage have been branded as “Nazis” and “bigots”, a senior Roman Catholic official has said.

John Deighan said there is an increasing level of ill will against “very young people” because of their views about such issues...

RU 486 Anniversary: 17% of Abortions Involve Dangerous Drug
...There have been doctors adding chemical abortions to their practice, but not in the numbers that the pill’s promoters had hoped. Statistics reported by the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute for 2005 and then 2008 indicate that perhaps as many as 150-160 new doctors are doing chemical abortions since 2000. From the pro-abortion perspective, this was important because it partially offset what would have been significant losses to the ranks of abortionists. However, with abortion numbers overall down a little or staying about the same at 1.2 million a year, the typical new abortionist’s caseloads are not likely to be that large...

Nine in ten Scots ‘living off state’s patronage’
Almost nine out of 10 Scottish households take more from the public purse than they contribute in taxes thanks to a “rotten system” of state patronage, the Tory party conference will hear on Monday...
and Scotland’s vitality was the envy of the world...The Scots were a nation of strivers, until the state promoted a toxic dependency culture...

One in five Americans reports no religious affiliation, study says
One-fifth of U.S. adults say they are not part of a traditional religious denomination, new data from the Pew Research Center show, evidence of an unprecedented reshuffling of Americans’ spiritual identities that is shaking up fields from charity to politics.

But despite their nickname, the “nones” are far from godless. Many pray, believe in God and have regular spiritual routines...

Bankrupt California: No money for crumbling roads, but billions for high-speed rail
...California has the nation’s highest gas taxes and fuel prices, and the tightest supplies — and reputedly one of the worst-maintained infrastructures, with out-of-date, overcrowded, and poorly maintained freeways. When I head home each week from Palo Alto, I feel like an Odysseus fighting modern-day Lotus Eaters, Cyclopes, and Laestrygonians to reach Ithaka, wondering what obstacle will sidetrack me this trip — huge potholes, entire sections of the freeway reduced to one lane, or various poorly marked detours? If the nation’s highest gas taxes give us all that, what might the lowest bring?

Although the state is facing a $16 billion annual budgetary shortfall, Governor Brown is determined to press ahead with high-speed rail — estimated to cost eventually over $200 billion. Such is his zeal that he intends to override the environmental lawsuits that usually stymie private projects for years...

Supreme Court of Canada rules you don’t have to tell your sex partner if you have HIV
In a landmark decision last Friday, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that people who are HIV-positive do not need to tell their sex partners they have the disease, as long as they have low levels of the virus and use a condom during sexual intercourse...

Sugar can disrupt basic brain function
Though you might feel a strong inkling toward loading up on sugary snacks during final exams or those last few hours of work, that might be a bad idea. Binging on sugar for as little as six weeks can actually make you dumber.

Researchers at UCLA have found that a diet high in sugar can disrupt the memory and learning functions of the brain, while omega-3 fatty acids can actually counteract said disruption.

High-fructose corn syrup, in particular, creates problems. The liquid is six times sweeter than cane sugar and, as you've probably heard, commonly added to soft drinks and processed foods. The average American actually consumes more than 40 pounds of this stuff every year...

The Brick Bible: Turning Jesus Stories into Lego Scenes
Brendan Powell Smith says he was “shocked” by what he read in the Bible as a philosophy and theology student in his twenties. And as the most popular book in the world, he couldn’t fathom that most people weren’t aware of the Bible’s stories. “People look to the Bible as a moral guide, but don’t really know it well,” he says. That was a situation he figured he could fix. With Legos...


The Flight from Hell
...The modern flight from hell usually takes one of three forms: outright denial, passive indifference, or—indirectly—belief in universal salvation. The latter has become increasingly attractive to certain Christians, for it allows them to declare their full belief in hell and its eternity while at the same time promote the idea (even though they cannot guarantee it) that no one actually goes there. An empty hell is nothing to fear, or spend one’s life trying to teach about, or avoid... image